Decks

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When you check the Tournament Winning Deck Archive, you see quite a lot of Weenie Auspex deck variations. Weenie Auspex is a wall deck archetype which features small-cap vampires having the Auspex discipline (preferably at superior). The deck wins because it controls (at least) its prey and predator by blocking their key actions, and eventually ousting its prey either by overwhelming with its prey with its large number of vampires, permanent bleed modifier cards or by cards like Smiling Jack.

How to win with themWeenie Auspex wins by controlling the table and usually (more or less slow) by infliction attrition damage through bleeds and/or Smiling Jack or Constant Revolution. Weenie Auspex’s first objective is to remain the last player standing, and its second objective is to oust its prey before it gets any victory points (or more precisely, before it gets more than one VP). By reaching these objectives, it has 2-3 VPs at most tables and therefore often a Game Win (or at least a tie). What helps in this task is, that Weenie Auspex looks inconspicuously at the beginning, especially for the novice player. Initially it also often applies little pressure on its prey and focuses in building up and staying alive.

In VTES, the basic strategy of a Powerbleed deck is to bleed his prey successfully with as few actions as possible, but with high amounts of damage in each action at the same time. This can be ranging from +2 bleed (Govern the Unaligned) to +7 bleed (Govern the Unaligned plus Command of the Beast plus Conditioning) actions. On the other hand, these bleeds are usually at no or low stealth. Instead the decks uses cards which don’t allow other minions to block these bleed actions. This technique is called block denial. This lack of decent amounts of stealth differentiates these decks from the Stealth & Bleed (S&B) bleed decks. This article mainly covers the Giovanni Powerbleed deck archetype since this is the most prominent and successful type of the Powerbleed breed and most of the principals also apply to other Powerbleed variants.

How to win with them
The key to winning with Powerbleed is to bleed consistently and always with the aim not only to land a successful bleed for 1 or 2, but a bleed for 5 or more. There are are a large variety of cards, but Dominate is the first choice since besides having a large number of bleed modifier cards, it also offers with Seduction one of the crucial block denial cards. The second choice of discipline is driven by the need for the second block denial card.

The crypt is then chosen by the question if a particular vampire features these two disciplines: a vampire below 5 should have both disciplines, between 5 and 6 at least one at superior (and the other at least inferior), and 7 and above both disciplines at superior.

The TGB deck initially lulls the table into the belief, that it is utterly harmless and it won’t do anything. In a way this is even true, but only until the deck has had its required setup. Then the first (and maybe second and third) TGB hits the table, and the vampires start inflicting pool damage by calling unblockable political actions.

The main action to keep the deck alive is Parity Shift; if you have an aggressive Stealth Bleed or Combat deck as predator, then you need to take down the aggressor first, and then turn to your prey. The deck is also a master of deal negotiation, because with the help of Parity Shift and/or Anneke’s special ability the player is able to deal damage quite effectively cross-table or block critical actions cross-table. The description of Erol Hammer’s TGB deck was “Survive and make a deal with someone who can oust”, and that exactly is this deck archetypes strength: it has table control. Each of the AAA trio of vampires has it’s own superior asset:

The Tupdog deck archetype has emerged after the Legacy of Blood expansion — containing the namesake of this archetype, the non-unique Gargoyle Tupdog — was released in late 2005. Since that time this deck archetype has won numerous tournaments including the South American Continental Championship 2014, the Italian ECQ 2013, and national championships in Brazil (2007 & 2013) and Norway (2007). The deck is a rush combat deck /w some added bleed capabilities based on the Tupdog vampire. It is quite a unique deck type, since Tupdog vampires burn after a round of their existence, and new Tupdogs need to be influenced out every turn to keep the deck’s main engine going.

How to win with them
The Tupdog is quite a unique vampire type. It can just act for a turn, but has several distinctive features:

they are non-unique vampires, i.e. you can have multiple Tupdogs in play.

they are burned at the end of the next minion phase. So they have one turn to act, and may block one (or more) time(s). On the other hand, for every Tupdog burned this way, another vampire is moved from your crypt to your ready region.

they are Tremere antitribu slaves, i.e. they act freely (especially take directed actions only if you control a ready Tremere antitribu.

they have both superior Visceratika and superior Potence, which is quite powerful for 1 cap vampire, and Visceratika cards costs the Tupdog one less blood to play.

Ahrimanes Bleed & Block deck is one of the best VTES toolbox decks around. It has won numerous tournaments around the world, including the EC 2006., the UK National Championship 2006, the Czech National 2007 and the French National 2013. It draws its strength from the ability to intercept all almost anything while being able to put pressure on its prey by bleeding it and/or intercepting its prey’s actions.

How to win with them
Despite the fact that most players consider this deck a wall deck, its approach is quite toolboxy when you look at the actual deck lists. The deck can intercept, fight and bleed. Not as good as dedicated decks in these respective areas, but comparable to some degree at least

The deck’s main strength is its ability to intercept consistently. The Ahrimanes have access to permanent intercept like Raven Spies or Guardian Angel as well as transient intercept in the form of Cat’s Guidance, Speak with Spirit, etc. More importantly the deck can also block crosstable (with Falcon’s Eye), i.e. it can block his prey’s bleed or tries to oust its prey in turn with any other (D) actions.

While the deck has some combat abilities, it lacks any decent damage prevention; it can only go to long range to avoid combat. The deck does not hit very hard, nor does it feature aggravated damage, but it offers consistently damage for 2-3 per round, often with Aid from Bats and Carrion Crows. So the deck usually doesn’t put an opposing vampire to torpor immediately, but by prolonged combats or repeatedly battling the same vampires. Nose of the Hound or Charge of the Buffalo is often used in addition, especially if the opponents vampire are hard to block (i.e. they are playing block denial or running high amounts of stealth).Continue Reading

In general, a Turbo deck is deck archetype which burns a copy of the same vampire, reincarnates via the Soul Gem of Etrius, and repeats this sequence of actions over and over again. The main purpose is that the last action is a big bleed, and this will — repeated multiple times in a turn — kill every prey, even sometimes more than one in a given turn.

How to win with them
There are several boundary conditions for this deck which need to be met:

The classic Nosferatu Royalty deck is a political deck based on the Nosferatu Princes and Justicar (usually from group 1/2). The decks uses political cards like Parity Shift and Kine Resources Contested to oust its prey as well as a variety of other cards that require Camarilla, a Prince or Justicar as support. The deck is quite solid since the crypt selection offers relatively cheap Nosferatu princes, who in addition all have Obfuscate to make the political actions more likely to be successful. In addition, the Nosferatu have access to two great locations, namely The Labyrinth and even more so Warsaw Station.

How to win with them

The deck’s main weapon are the political actions Parity Shift and Kine Resources Contested. Due to the nature of the Parity Shift, it is not only used for damaging its prey’s pool, but also pool gain for the deck itself. To be able to play the Parity Shift throughout the game, the deck constantly influences out new vampires or plays expensive master cards or costly equipment for its minions. For killing its prey the vampires either bleed (usually for one) or play a Kine Resources Contested as the finishing move. Sometimes also the deck sports Judgement: Camarilla Segregation, but this can backfire if your grandprey or grandpredator have not only Camarilla vampires and they no pool gain or are under pressure anyway.